Saturday, August 01, 2009

The Coral Cross landing page (logged-in state) while the game was on foot

Folks, much water under the bridge in the past month. One week ago was the conclusion of Coral Cross, on which project, more soon. For now, though, here's the final email we sent out to players, which should give those weren't able to participate some sort of sense of what went on...

date: 28 July 2009 23:41subject: Thank you for playing Coral Cross

Dear Coral Cross supporters,

Late Saturday night Hawaiian-time, Coral Cross drew to a conclusion, after a month of gameplay. Mahalos are due to who took part in this modest experiment in real-time pandemic awareness, the world's first 'Emergent Reality Game'. The project duration was extended well beyond its originally planned week-long window, in order to allow more widespread access to the experience.

From a final tally of 520+ Pandemic Aware Citizens, 400 were from the USA (of which, one in four was from Hawaii), as well as 30 from the UK, 20 each from Canada and Australia, and smaller contingents from across the globe: Argentina, Belgium, Brunei, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Sweden. By the end, with a particularly virulent strain of the virus spreading rapidly through our player population, 350 had become 'infected', of which 101 passed away, and 21 recovered. (Take note -- this represents an extraordinarily high case fatality rate. We the living should count ourselves lucky!)

During the course of Coral Cross, some 700 comments were contributed across the full range of forum topics on Pandemic Awareness and the Vaccine Queue. This figure excludes the many conversations carried on via profile 'wall posts'.

We'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate again players who excelled in Coral Cross. Along with those who completed the extra activities -- the Twitter challenge and the N95 mission (and who were duly recognized for doing so, with bonus Vigilance) -- we'd like again to acknowledge those rewarded with discretionary bonuses for outstanding substantive contributions. These top players were DISZASTER, DUSTYGK, INTO THE WOODS, JASOND56, MAYA and TUMBLEWEED. In addition, CONNIE must be noted for exceptionally high Vigilance, taking part tirelessly in discussions, and providing influenza news and links to other players.

The trio of Super-Vigilant individuals who ascended to the rank of 'Leader' (earning at least 600 points, while activating at least three new players) were MAYA from Belgium, MAX from Virginia and KALANI from New Zealand. Well done! The top fifty Coral Cross players are listed in full at the bottom of this email.

We should also reiterate our thanks to the many people who made the project possible. They are named at the Credits page, which can still be accessed via http://coralcross.org.

Finally, friends; on behalf of the Hawaii Department of Health, we hope you found participating in Coral Cross an interesting and worthwhile experience. Now that this phase is finally complete, we would welcome your feedback. Especially if you completed the pre-game survey -- but even if you didn't -- there is a brief evaluation questionnaire here: http://tinyurl.com/coralcross-00 (Please note, this was produced for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention independently from the game's design.) To contact the game's designers with direct or more detailed feedback, do feel free to email us: info@coralcross.org

The game may be over, but as time goes by, there is little doubt that the need for Vigilance will remain. Wherever you may be, our hope is that you're now just a little bit more prepared to help your community to face the pandemic flu risk.